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 FILIPPOS PROEDROU

ENERGY
POLICY
AND
SECURITY
UNDER
CLIMATE
CHANGE
Energy Policy and Security under Climate Change
 Filippos Proedrou

Energy Policy and

Security under
Climate Change
Filippos Proedrou
University of South Wales
Cardiff, UK

ISBN 978-3-319-77163-2    ISBN 978-3-319-77164-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77164-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018936607

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
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publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
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Cover design: Akihiro Nakayama

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer

International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my little sunshine, Anastasia, and to Maria for all her love and support.
 Contents

1 Introduction    1

2 Ecological and Steady-State Economics: Principles

and Policies  35

3 Designing a Steady-State Energy Policy   57

4 Energy Security in a Steady-State World  109

5 Geopolitics and Development in a Steady-­State World  145

6 Conclusion 177

Index 199

vii
 List of Abbreviations

AMI Advanced Metering Infrastructure

CCS Carbon Capture and Storage
COP21 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris
ETS Emissions Trading System
EU European Union
FIPs Feed-in Premiums
FITs Feed-in Tariffs
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GPI Genuine Progress Indicator
IEA International Energy Agency
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change
ISEW Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare
ISIS The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
OPEC The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
ppm parts per million
ROCs Renewables Obligation Certificates
UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
UNSDGs United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
WTO World Trade Organization

ix
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Centralized versus decentralized energy systems 89

Table 3.2 Steady-state versus mainstream low carbon energy policy 94
Table 4.1 Energy security in the steady-state and mainstream energy
policy framework 134
Table 5.1 Geopolitics and development in the steady-state and
mainstream energy policy framework 168

xi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Climate Change Comes of Age

Humanity finds itself at a critical crossroads. Based on the mainstream
scientific consensus, humanity is faced with multiple existential threats. It
is reaching critical planetary limits in domains such as global freshwater
use and ocean acidification, rate of biodiversity loss, land-system change,
stratospheric ozone depletion, and growth across all indices of starving
resources (Zimmerer 2014: 268). The tip of the iceberg is climate change,
meaning not just an uninterrupted upward trend of the average global
temperature, but also—and not least importantly—interference with cli-
matic conditions and cycles, which multiply and intensify extreme climatic
phenomena. Contemporary available scientific data show that in 2014 the
concentration of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere had sur-
passed 400 parts per million (ppm) (Chesney et al. 2016: 5). Mainstream
scientific estimations regard 450 ppm as the benchmark threshold. Beyond
that, the increase of the global temperature is expected to surpass the 2
degrees Celsius with unbearable consequences on the climate and the
human condition (King 2011; Falkner 2016: 1109).
Framing the issue macroscopically, humanity survived due to conducive
conditions throughout the Holocene, the geological period dated to
11,000 years ago. We entered the most recent phase, Anthropocene, 250
years ago. Anthropocene is characterized by the reversal of a symbiotic
relationship between humans and the ecosystem following the Industrial
Revolution, and the end of the slow and peaceful utilization of the latter’s

© The Author(s) 2018 1

F. Proedrou, Energy Policy and Security under Climate Change,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77164-9_1
2 F. PROEDROU

resources for the former’s survival and welfare. The Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change (1990, 1995, 2001, 2007, 2013) has issued five
assessment reports, in which significant probability has given way to cer-
tainty regarding the anthropogenic nature of climate change.
At inception, climate change was viewed principally as a technical issue
assigned to specialized institutions and framed in equally scientific terms.
These initial formulations unraveled as the scope of threat presented by
climate change came into focus. Given ‘biophysical framings of climate
impacts and ecosystems vulnerability, it is now recognized that vulnerabil-
ity to climate change properly extends to the socioeconomic and political
conditions that affect how communities cope with the impacts of climate-­
related hazards’ (Mason 2011: 164).
As the initial speculation waned—along with overt denial and skepti-
cism—the understanding of climate change graduated to widespread
acquiescence of the bold fact that the climate has entered a phase of trans-
formation that works to the detriment of human existence. There are three
main reasons why this has happened in the course of the last two decades.
Firstly, science itself has generated compelling evidence on the validity of
the initial hypothesis. Accordingly, the burden of proof has moved to the
opposite camp, which has failed to wage a persuasive campaign. Secondly,
and related to the above, ecological transformations are producing power-
ful visible effects of climate change impact, now and into the future. Thirdly,
there has been a significant—albeit far from universal—shift in entrepre-
neurial mood and concomitant growing acceptance of economic conver-
gence with climate change. There is ample space for innovation and plenty
corporate opportunities in ‘green capitalism’, which more and more eco-
nomic actors are eager to seize upon, especially given tense competition in
saturated economic sectors that drives the need for diversification of busi-
ness portfolios. This economic convergence has facilitated a more favorable
understanding of the challenge and enabled responses to it (Beck and Van
Loon 2011: 117–21).
The main culprit behind climate change has been the extensive use of
fossil fuels. Climate change mitigation has hence been ‘cast largely as one
of changing the energy systems of contemporary society away from fossil
fuel-based systems towards low- or no-carbon systems’ (Steffen 2011:
31). Given energy’s centrality in the modern world, reversing climate
change emerges as a fundamentally political project; it not only requires a
large-scale transition in the global political economy, but also encompasses
notions of social justice and issues of international governance. At the
 INTRODUCTION 3

same time, it presents formidable challenges not only to traditional ideas

of national sovereignty and market organization, but also to established
trade patterns and policies in the context of globalization. As a bottom-­
line, climate change presents a challenge to humanity’s capacity to orga-
nize efficient and equitable collective action, and to tackle inequalities
resulting from climate change (Miliband 2011a: 193).
Although ‘pressure for more comprehensive climate policy becomes
critical for the future of energy globally’ (Dubash and Florini 2011: 10),
the discourse on and responses to climate change mitigation have been
‘subject to international geopolitical scheming’ (Goldthau 2013a: 2).
Additionally, climate change policy and actions have been impacted by the
uneven distribution of capabilities at the international level and the diverse
economic development status of respective stakeholders. Treating climate
change as a public policy issue emanating from ‘market failure and ensuing
externalities that call for public interventions’ (Goldthau 2013a: 2)—to
the contrary—has hardly caught on. In this context, the global gover-
nance of energy has been confined to long-term planning, identification of
trends in the energy markets and buffering of price shocks, rather than
focused on providing energy security as a public good and preventing
further climate change as a public bad (Goldthau 2013a: 2–3).
Overall, responses to climate change—practical efforts to bring emis-
sions down to sustainable levels—have been greatly conditioned by main-
stream understandings of and workings within the global political economy,
the global political system, and domestic political contours. After explor-
ing these interactions in the next three sections, this introductory chapter
moves on to expose the prevailing inconsistencies plaguing responses to
climate change. The analysis then broaches the implicit trilemma between
climate change mitigation, energy security and growth that drives the poli-
tics of climate change mitigation. Against this backdrop, the book sets out
an alternative model of energy transition that breaks from the growth
imperative tied to the traditional prisms of energy security, geopolitics and
development.

The Market Orthodoxy and Its Discontents

A great cleavage in energy and climate policy is the division of labor between
the state and the market. Market proponents see in climate change another
problem—as all others—that can be solved via market mechanisms. Others
blame the advent of climate change on the unfettered nature of global
4 F. PROEDROU

markets, and call for the state to recapture the competences it has yielded
and organize economic activity in a climate-friendly and sustainable way
(Giddens 2011).
Scholarly literature has focused lately on the ensuring-enabling state
(Giddens 2011: 71–2). States can simply not afford to place all their faith
in the invisible hand of the market. The magnitude of the problem of cli-
mate change calls for the state to marshal its vast resources and ensure
market players can make profits if they play along with the new rules gov-
ernments have engineered. From this perspective, states are entrusted to
take pivotal decisions that will direct the key solutions to climate-related
problems. This does not boil down to picking winners, but to picking
games (Liu and Hanauer 2016). States emerge as editors of choices and
determine the kind and range of measures to mitigate climate change.
Interestingly, this approach calls for state intervention so that specific
direction is given to market players to follow suit and enforce state initia-
tives. Proponents prioritize the strategic role of the state to adjust incen-
tives and regulations so that the market can be geared to yield climate-friendly
results. While they consider the market unable to initiate the grand transi-
tion itself—it is essential to note—they refrain from market capitulation for
the sake of state-run programs. Kuzemko et al. (2015: 17–18) have sum-
marized governments’ failures in the energy sector as consisting of bureau-
cratic expansionism and ‘crowding out’ effects that in practice create moral
hazard, distortions of the price mechanism and ‘white elephants’ due to
information failures. Arguments deriving from a critique of market perfor-
mance, thus, fall short of recommending proposals for the introduction of
heavily interventionist policies that would obscure market mechanisms. To
the contrary, carbon markets, insurance companies, recycling enterprises
and corporations developing smart technologies have a prevalent role in
climate responses. This reflects a deeply ingrained mistrust of the state’s
management capabilities, as well as persistent faith in the benign impact of
self-interest, understood as the most likely driver for positive change
(Miliband 2011b: 199–200).
Other scholars, on the other hand, challenge this ‘markets first’
approach (Mazzucato 2015a, b; Stiglitz 2010). Mazzucato (2015a, b), for
example, suggests that the state should focus on pioneering innovation.
Mazzucato convincingly shows how the state has in many cases paved the
way for innovative technologies and services, denouncing this way the
myth that innovation can only originate in the market. In this context, she
extends a call to states around the world to take a proactive stance and
 INTRODUCTION 5

bring forward exactly those innovations that are necessary to drag the
world out of the rising climate nightmare, like electricity storage, clean
technologies and so on. In this understanding, the state can serve as a
pioneer and creator of new markets—rather than a more modest correc-
tive role (Mazzucato 2015a).
The distancing from the absolute faith in markets and their capacity to
self-regulate reflects persistent energy market failures (e.g. information
asymmetry, incomplete markets, monopolies, unaccounted for externalities
and failure to provide public goods) (Kuzemko et al. 2015: 16–17). In
particular, this distancing from a pure market approach is tied to two
empirical fronts. Firstly, although knowledge and understanding of climate
change has been with us for a few decades, the market has hardly addressed
the challenge—opting for business as usual solutions (Dalby 2015).
Secondly, the wave of market liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s has
shown its limits and revealed its shortcomings (e.g. short-termism, corro-
sion of public institutions, lack of controls for system risk, infrastructure-­
related problems, and counter-productive institutional and material
locks-in) (Giddens 2011: 111). Importantly, the aggravation of public
good provision has gone hand in hand with corporate profitability. Elected
governments have thus been accused of being complicit partners of the
corporate world, and of failing to live up to their duty to protect and fur-
ther common causes (Giddens 2011: 111; Dannreuther 2015: 479;
Proedrou 2012: 62).
It is interesting to briefly explore why the market has failed to yield
positive climate-related results. The cumulative corporate response can be
summarized in terms of ecological modernization, this meaning a number
of measures that were undertaken to secure capitalistic structures and
agents from profit losses. In particular, the market responded to environ-
mental hazards, and increased state regulations, with sophisticated techni-
cal fixes. A number of market tools, such as the cap and trade system for
pollutants, investments on cleaner practices and fuel-switching have been
utilized, all bringing substantial economic, but only partial ecological ben-
efits (Dalby 2015: 434–6). In other words, corporate responses revolved
around quick fixes to emissions-related problems, and failed to bring about
a new economic architecture where sustainability and profitability would
be matched in a harmonious way (Falkner 2016: 1118). In particular,
corporations initially sought the most inexpensive emissions reductions
and/or secured exemptions from regulation. Thereafter, markets pursued
the management of projects designed to bring emissions down, new
6 F. PROEDROU

energy technologies and—most significantly—carbon markets. Indeed,

markets have become so central to climate responses that one can talk of
the marketization of climate change (Paterson 2011: 611, 617). To add
insult to injury, offset schemes and market instruments designed to bring
emissions down have persistently focused on fossil energy projects instead
of mechanisms designed to promote investment in renewable energy gen-
eration. Economic fundamentals account for this tendency in the presence
of low-cost, high-credit fossil projects that have effectively dislodged
renewable energy investments. The economic orthodoxy of the World
Bank has facilitated this approach by prioritizing the financial attractive-
ness of energy projects over holistic social and economic criteria (Zelli
et al. 2013: 341–3, 352). Offset schemes are further limited by the inher-
ent risk of carbon fraud and the criticism that carbon trading serves largely
only to shift the location of pollution, not reduced carbon emissions. The
presence of these limits within the construct of profitability maximization
point to the parallel weakness of this approach to substantially contribute
to climate change mitigation (Paterson 2011: 616; Young 2011: 628).
This is what Dalby (2015: 436–8) calls neoliberal security; the under-
taken measures have facilitated the resilience of capitalist modes of opera-
tion and entrenched the understanding that the future can improve by
means of private, rather than public, efforts. One of the first responses of
the fossil industry to climate change mitigation, for example, has been the
development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems. This would
allow it to continue business as usual strategies with a relative stabilization
of carbon emissions (Larkin et al. 2017). Nevertheless, this technology
significantly reduces fossil fuel-fired power plant energy efficiencies. At the
same time, it would only perpetuate other environmental problems, such
as resource scarcity and environmental pollution. At a more profound
level, CCS treats the symptoms, rather than the cause of carbon emissions.
By enabling enhanced oil recovery, CCS only accentuates the very prob-
lem it is intended to deal with in the first place (Fuhr 2016; Brown and
Sovacool 2011: 106).1
The idea that geo-engineering could be the ultimate solution—should
climate disruptions proliferate and intensify amid an altogether failure of
adaptation—speaks to the prevalence of the neoliberal security mindset
(Dalby 2015: 439). At the same time, such policy proposals marginalize
alternatives revolving around the reshaping of the contours of the political
economy towards sustainable trajectories (Fuhr 2016). Both solar radia-
tion management and marine cloud brightening, nevertheless, are vastly
 INTRODUCTION 7

underexplored techniques. Not only can they just delay, rather than
reduce, the concentration of emissions in the atmosphere, but they may
also cause severe disruption of climatic phenomena around the world
(Brown and Sovacool 2011: 129–31; Fuhr 2016). Interestingly, geoengi-
neering also aims to create new markets in the longer term. While the
public discourse is all about climate change mitigation, strong business
sector interest lies underneath, not least from the military complex (Cairns
and Stirling 2014: 26, 34).2
Based on the liberal axiom that Friedrich von Hayek (1944) set for
determining whether the market or the state should be in charge of spe-
cific issue-areas, climate change stands out as the principal area where the
market evidently underperforms, thus severely compromising the freedom
and rights of global citizens (Giddens 2011: 120). Even if narrow eco-
nomics’ fundamentals do not dictate urgent and wide-ranging climate
action, social reasons do (Bowen and Rydge 2011: 79); and it is only from
the states that one can expect to take action on these grounds.

International Climate Diplomacy

The climate change battlefield is being waged on two fronts: the national,
encompassing the local and extending to the regional, with states under-
taking domestic climate measures and policies; and the global, with states
coordinating global efforts in the understanding that climate change is
reversible only with collective action. Not only do the risks emanating
from climate change transcend national borders by nature, but climate
change is also ‘de-bounding’ in the sense that it substantially transforms
boundaries spatially (across nation-states), temporally (involving different
timescales) and socially (reconfiguring accountability, responsibility and
liability) (Beck and Van Loon 2011).
It is in this context that national interests and antagonisms co-exist with
global cooperative endeavors in the make-up of climate politics. Starting
with the Rio de Janeiro Earth summit and the ensuing United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992, signed
into force in 1994, states worldwide embarked on the titanic effort to
respond to climate change. Progress, however, has since been sluggish at
best, and far from linear. Ten years later, the Johannesburg summit in 2002
institutionalized public-private partnerships across the nexus of energy, sus-
tainability and climate change, including the prominent Renewable Energy
and Energy Efficiency Partnership (Zelli et al. 2013: 347–8). Climate change
mitigation, though, remained on the margins of global politics.
8 F. PROEDROU

Mainly club-like solutions short of global membership have been

advanced thereafter. The European Union (EU)-led effort for an interna-
tional cap-and-trade system and mandatory carbon emissions reductions
was adopted in 1997 and put into force in 2005. While it marked the first
mechanism and binding obligations scheme to bring emissions down, the
Kyoto Protocol ultimately failed to create solid and enduring incentives
for emissions reductions and decarbonization by setting a static emissions
reduction target (Falkner 2016: 1110–11). The G8 Gleneagles summit in
Britain in 2005 placed energy and climate issues at the core of the institu-
tion’s deliberations for the first time. Moreover, it established the more
inclusive G8+5 forum, to incorporate the most important emerging
energy consumers (Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa). The
Heiligendamm summit in 2007, moreover, integrated these countries on
a permanent basis in the G8 deliberations. While this has been a positive
step, a number of other significant energy players, including Saudi Arabia
and Turkey, remain outside. The remit of the G8+5 forum hence remains
short of a truly global governance mechanism. Nevertheless, the extended
form of the G8 has been instrumental in debating, articulating and set-
ting, even if devoid of any binding commitments, pivotal benchmark
goals. The Hokkaido summit in 2008 set for the first time the goal of
halving global emissions by 2050; and, the G8 summit in L’Aquilla in
2009 officially endorsed the mainstream scientific opinion that the increase
of the global temperature should not exceed 2 degrees Celsius. On top of
this, it also recognized industrialized states’ obligation to reduce green-
house gas emissions by 80% in 2050 and set the year 1990 as the bench-
mark year for comparative reductions (Ebinger and Avasarala 2013:
193–4; Zelli et al. 2013: 346). As a result of the eruption of the global
financial crisis and its management by the G20, the organization grew
stronger and gradually took up discussions from G8 (Heywood 2011:
117). At the Pittsburgh summit in 2009, the G20 pledged to phase out
fossil fuel subsidies in the run of the following decades, in an effort to
rationalize and minimize fossil energy use (Zelli et al. 2013: 347).
The failure of the global Copenhagen summit in 2009 came as a disap-
pointment as the global population had been awash with hopes for a full-­
fledged global deal to tackle climate change effectively. Efforts to reach to
this goal, however, resumed thereafter with the Cancun summit in 2010
establishing a—even if modest—Green Capital Fund to assist climate
change mitigation and adaptation. The Durban summit a year later put
together a roadmap for a new agreement by 2015, while the Doha summit
 INTRODUCTION 9

in 2012 saw an agreement by most signatories to the Kyoto Protocol to

set new targets, albeit the decision by some members to walk out of the
summit’s second phase (Bradshaw 2014: 145, 190–1).
International climate diplomacy has established global climate stabiliza-
tion policy as a norm and the principle of ‘common but differentiated
responsibilities’ based on respective capabilities (Falkner et al. 2011: 205).
These form the building blocks of the contemporary global climate archi-
tecture. In this diplomatic environment, hard power, in the form of force
and coercion, is widely regarded as weak and an irrelevant instrument for
promoting cooperative behavior by states. Economic leverage and ensuing
carrots and sticks can in some cases provide anchor points for reaching
consensus between advanced and emerging economies. Most importantly,
however, deliberation, particular framings of issues and persuasion serves
as the main instruments for climate diplomacy (Falkner et al. 2011: 209).
The example of the EU as an institution that consolidated its responsibility
for European collective action on climate change and role in international
fora is instructive with the Kyoto Protocol being compatible with and
building upon the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) (Helm 2014).
In general, all stakeholders in the climate negotiations have been inter-
ested in ensuring flexibility in meeting climate targets. This has been the
case in order to both ensure that this effort would not overshadow other
parallel goals, as well as to yield the maximum efficiency possible. Such
discursive frames have been central in climate diplomacy and enabled mar-
ket responses in a few distinct ways. Flexibility has been built-in the system
through emissions trading, the Clean Development Mechanism and Joint
Implementation schemes. The rationale behind emissions trading, enabled
by the fact that the territorial source of emissions is insignificant for the
sum of global emissions, has been to allow maximum efficiency for meet-
ing climate targets for all players and, in doing so, also open up substantial
market opportunities. Although we remain far from a global emissions
trading regime, a patchwork of carbon markets has come into play with
the increasing involvement of non-state actors, start-ups and banks. In
additional to the European carbon market, a number of national and sub-­
national carbon markets are being established, most crucially in the United
States and China (Paterson 2011: 612–20).
While climate politics in the 1990s were underpinned by the EU’s lead
and the U.S. reluctance to join international climate agreements and mech-
anisms, from the 2000s the shifting ecological burden progressively tilted
the locus of climate diplomacy. With the EU greenhouse gas emissions
10 F. PROEDROU

falling to single-digit numbers, and its international diplomatic power on

the wane, the heart of climate diplomacy shifted eastwards. As reflected in
the disappointing Copenhagen accord of 2009, American and Chinese
national preoccupations and antagonisms eliminated the potential for a
substantial agreement and legally binding international commitments to
the cause. Divisions between the Global North and the Global South,
p­ersonified in the U.S.-China clash, rest on who should shoulder the bur-
den, and to what extent, for bringing down excessive carbon emissions—
the developed Western polluters or the emerging economic powers (De
Matteis 2012).
Developed nations are historically responsible for the overt concentra-
tion of emissions in the atmosphere, but were largely unaware during
most of the industrial period of the climate repercussions from growing
carbon emissions. At the same time, their emissions reduction efforts are
insufficient to bring emissions down to numbers capable of stabilizing
global temperatures. The criterion of population is brought to the table as
a way to highlight that the very large populations of the emerging econo-
mies are driving global energy consumption, and hence action on their
side is required. The emerging economies counter-argue that the founda-
tion of any climate change discussion should be emissions per capita, this
way returning the ball to the Global North’s side (De Matteis 2012).
While climate change mitigation negotiations have placed an undue
emphasis on population numbers and whether carbon emissions should be
estimated on a state or per capita basis (Paterson 2011: 612), a more
nuanced approach looks at the very composition and dynamics of the pop-
ulation. For one, the creation of a global middle class is tantamount to the
increase of energy use and carbon emissions. Secondly, the global trend of
increasing numbers of households (meaning that more people are propor-
tionately living alone) serves as a further driver of increased energy con-
sumption. The composition of the global population also impacts energy
use, with different age groups manifesting different energy use patterns.
For example, young adults consume more energy for mobility and the
elderly for heating, albeit in general energy consumption decreases with
ageing populations. While this, together with low fertility rates, may be
good news for the Global North, the inverse image is reflected in the
demographics of the Global South (Bradshaw 2014: 151–2).
Increasing urbanization trends represents another issue. Urbanization
constitutes a driver of economic growth with the effect that energy con-
sumption goes up. Although, these energy needs are met in a more efficient
 INTRODUCTION 11

way than in rural areas, thus making for proportionately lower emissions,
cities account for the generation of two thirds of the global emissions and
for 70% of global energy consumption (World Bank 2016). This opens up
significant leeway for alternative global energy and climate governance
structures, with the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group being a case in
point (Bradshaw 2014: 47–8; Brown and Sovacool 2011: 119–20).
While the emerging economies undeniably account for an increasingly
large share of emissions, a trend that is projected to continue in the mid-­
term, these countries on the other hand have hardly enjoyed the benefits of
previous industrialization rounds that negatively impacted the atmosphere.
At the same time, they need fossil energy to keep their economies develop-
ing in order to drag their people out of poverty and low welfare standards
(Paterson 2011: 612). These major energy consumers perceive the Global
North’s stance on climate negotiations as a conspired effort to suppress
their access to modern energy services (Dubash and Florini 2011: 15).
These arguments have become more pronounced in line with the emerg-
ing economies’ growing diplomatic clout, and tie in with their pledge for
enhanced representation and influence within the established Western-
dominated framework of international cooperation (Falkner et al. 2011:
211–12; Mahbubani 2013).
What the great representatives of the two rival blocks in climate diplo-
macy—China and the United States—have in common is, ostensibly, their
reluctance to tie themselves down to binding agreements and this way
compromise their sovereignty. This reinforces perceptions of international
order as characterized by anarchic inefficiency with inadequate and sub-­
optimal representation (Held and Fane-Hervey 2011).
Climate change cleavages—last but not least—do not run across only the
Global North-Global South axis, but also internally. The discrepancy
between the EU top-down and the U.S. bottom-up approach to climate
policy point to very different logics of climate action (Bradshaw 2014:
72–3, 82–3). Russia, for its part, has followed a rather passive and non-­
ambitious stand for two reasons. Firstly, it makes the case that the ecosys-
tem services provided by Russia’s vast forests should be factored in its
contribution; secondly, the establishment of 1990 as the benchmark year
coincides with the Soviet Union’s disintegration period and ensuing low
levels of economic activity and emissions, impacting Russia’s ability to com-
fortably meet climate targets (Bradshaw 2014: 115). The position of China
and a host of small and/or least developed countries in the Global South,
moreover, has gradually diverged, with China increasingly shouldering
more responsibilities in climate change mitigation (Wu 2016).
12 F. PROEDROU

Overall, the elastic terms of the climate justice debate render it often
futile given different perceptions of justice and referent objects, as well as
differing historical pathways and personal values (O’Neill 2011). This cat-
egorical absence of a shared sense of fairness has been instrumental in
perpetuating free-riding and blocking a full-fledged global agreement. At
the same time, it has allowed the climate change discussion to be monopo-
lized by—and remain hostage to—utility and competitiveness consider-
ations (Young 2011: 627). Justice-related issues have also been emphatically
overshadowed by power politics and geopolitical considerations. It is
noteworthy that only six economies (China, the United States, EU, India,
Russia, and Japan), and within them mostly their most affluent parts,
account for 70% of global emissions (EPA). At the same time, coal con-
sumption in the United States and China accounts for most of global coal
consumption (Bradshaw 2014: 59). These two cases bring home the point
that those who benefit from climate-damaging activities pay dispropor-
tional costs; those least able to bear the costs have to shoulder a dispropor-
tionate burden of climate deterioration; and that the least well-off receive
services that dwarf their needs. Since energy production, trade and con-
sumption patterns span key intertwined dimensions of markets, security,
sustainability and development (Goldthau 2013a: 3), key equity issues
such as distributive justice and maximization of social welfare remain mar-
ginalized (Brown and Sovacool 2011: 188–9). In the words of Michael
Mason (2011: 166), the climate vulnerability of developing countries is

inseparable from, and exacerbates, global disparities in wealth and relative

power: the most disadvantaged face a disproportionate burden of climate-­
related risks even though they are least responsible for contributing to dan-
gerous levels of greenhouse gases, and have received little or no benefit from
the economic activities causing climate change.

In other words, we are more often than not left with sub-optimal dis-
tribution of costs and benefits to different groups of citizens ‘across
income, ethnic, and racial groups, across regions of a country, and across
countries’ (Brown and Sovacool 2011: 188–9).
Moreover, globalization has put into motion ‘the underlying processes
driving the geographies of energy demand and carbon emissions’ and has
substantially altered the contours of the global political economy in the sense
that ‘consumption in the developed economies is directly implicated in the
rapid growth of energy demand and carbon emissions in the emerging econ-
 INTRODUCTION 13

omies’ (Bradshaw 2014: 147). In this context, globalization highlights the

intertwined nature of the contemporary global political economy that is ‘con-
founding global agreement on climate-change policy’ (Bradshaw 2014: 48).
Emissions outsourcing blurs the picture further and creates stark ana-
lytical problems. Transnational, global production networks now drive
economic activity and global trade in the stead of national industries and
corporate structures. A territorially based system of climate change diplo-
macy is perhaps convenient as a reflection of current geopolitics but may
be ill equipped to fit with today’s complex political and economic reality.
This heightened and deep interdependence makes—to the contrary—a
strong case for closer and more constructive cooperation between and
within the Global North and the Global South (Bradshaw 2014: 45, 147).
From a more groundbreaking viewpoint—rather than looking at states
and entrenched categories of states—it is the (upper) middle class, how-
ever unevenly and disproportionately distributed across the globe, which
is the main culprit behind persistently high carbon emissions. Climate
diplomacy affords different degrees of protection to citizens of the global
middle class but hardly stimulates necessary change nor provides for equity
and social welfare (Harris 2011: 643–4).
It is for these reasons that conceptions of international justice, the ethi-
cal and practical foundational unit of the nation-state, obscure the climate
change debate. An international justice framing legitimizes national inter-
ests, traditional interstate politics and geopolitics, competitiveness con-
cerns and ‘you go first’ mentalities. These figure prominently in
international justice intellectual schemata and naturally lead to a funda-
mentally problematic global terrain for solutions of collective problems
and the provision of global public goods. Cosmopolitan justice, on the
other hand, recognizes nation-states’ practical importance, but views them
as an ‘inadequate basis for deciding what is just climatewise’ (Harris 2011:
642). In a world characterized by rising interdependencies, globalization,
climate change, relationships of causal responsibility that transcend
national borders, and overlapping communities of fate, states can be better
theorized as the vehicles for climate change purposes, vice the units of
reference (Held 2004; McGrew 2007; Frangonikolopoulos and Proedrou
2013: 9; Harris 2011: 640–50). A ‘cosmopolitan corollary to the interna-
tional governance of climate change’ (Harris 2011: 644–5) therefore
seems both more well-grounded and appropriate to address—in particu-
lar—interlinkages between two truly global in scope goals: climate change
mitigation and access to energy for the least well-off.
14 F. PROEDROU

For the time being, consistent with understandings of international jus-

tice, tension remains between the need, on the one hand, to bring emis-
sions down and, on the other, to fuel development in the Global South.
This tension can only be reconciled and resolved through cosmopolitan
understandings and concerted action of all actors, including energy
importers and global governance institutions (Bradshaw 2014: 146). The
awareness of the consequences of climate change and the understanding
of the atmosphere as a shared resource render the enormous ecological
footprint of industrialized nations and their citizens as tantamount to
human rights violations. Their immense ecological footprint curbs the
ecological space of the Global South and creates a pressing obligation for
the Global North to pursue a carbon neutral lifestyle (Held et al. 2011: 6;
Singer 2011). Duties to assist the Global South in implementing adapta-
tion measures also exist within this overarching obligation so as to advert
adverse distributional consequences of climate change.

Domestic Constraints
The history of deadlock in international climate negotiations resulted in
the delay of significant progress at the domestic level in many states due to
entrenched fears that unilateral measures would weaken one’s economy
and enhance free-riders. A number of domestic political factors, however,
have also contributed to stalled outcomes. Autocracies are by nature non-­
transparent, unaccountable and broadly immune from public pressures;
the risk of underperformance or unenlightened decision-making is hence
omnipresent, and naturally extends to climate change mitigation. While
the Chinese political establishment has put forward a bold energy reform
plan (Kuzemko et al. 2015: 116; Chen and Lees 2016; Mathews 2015),
verification mechanisms are obscure and civil society drivers for more
comprehensive climate action are missing. This latter factor may also
account for the fact that China’s climate policy seems driven by narrower
air pollution problems and related dire effects on the health of Chinese
citizens, rather than climate change itself and its wider ramifications (Haas
2017: 2; Eid et al. 2016: 13).
Democracies, on the other hand, albeit preferable to autocracies in
responding to climate change, are far from optimal either. Although open
democratic systems enjoy the support, know-how and political pressure of
NGOs and businesses working to support the cause of climate change
 INTRODUCTION 15

mitigation (Giddens 2011: 76, 123–6), the same is also true for the forces
resisting political change (Paterson 2011: 614; Giddens 2011: 122).
Moreover, short-termism, self-referring decision-making, interest group
concentration and weak multilateralism also help explain the slow progress
in both setting and achieving ambitious national climate goals as well as
realizing effective international cooperation (Held and Fane-Hervey
2011). Climate change mitigation’s medium- to long-term horizon, com-
bined with the need for high upfront costs and unpopular measures in the
short-term, clashes with the brevity of electoral cycles and governments’
subsequent prioritization of other issues in the policy agenda (Falkner
2016: 1109). Moreover, intense lobbying by fossil industries, together
with the increasing influence of money and vested interests across the
political system, render climate-friendly policies harder to legislate and
implement (Renner 2015: 12; Giddens 2011: 122; Paterson 2011: 614).3
The case of ExxonMobil is illuminating amid the firm’s notorious tac-
tics of hiding and manipulating evidence regarding the advent of climate
change (Coll 2012). Other organizations, such as the Global Climate
Coalition and the Climate Council, also gained notoriety for their role in
both lobbying for the incumbent fossil industry in the United States, as
well as for forging international alliances with climate change-denying
states, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. These countervailing forces have
as of lately been increasingly balanced by an empowered renewable energy
industry and insurance companies vying to hedge against rising and unpre-
dictable future costs, as well as a plethora of various stakeholders in search
of diversifying their investment portfolios (Paterson 2011: 614).
In the U.S. political setting, domestic politics also helps explain why
a carbon tax remains elusive while emission trading schemes have prolif-
erated. Different voting criteria (unanimity for a carbon tax but only
qualified majority required for emissions trading schemes) have facili-
tated the latter scheme irrespective of benefits or disadvantages (Paterson
2011: 617). This is why Ebinger and Avasarala (2013: 195) conclude
that ‘the obstacle to international consensus is more often local as
opposed to geopolitical. Given the importance of energy policy to the
citizens, and therefore voters, in each member nation, consensus on such
issues is normally derailed by domestic politics’. This naturally leads to
constrained mandate and narrow leeway for global governance struc-
tures to make headways in climate change mitigation (Ebinger and
Avasarala 2013: 196).
16 F. PROEDROU

The Climate Regime and the New Paradigm

of Domestically Driven Action

While a fully-fledged climate and energy regime has yet to emerge, the
institutionalization of piecemeal agreements and governance mechanisms
is giving rise to a nascent regime in an incremental fashion. For Keohane
and Victor (2011), climate governance amounts to a regime complex with
several institutional arrangements loosely coupled at variant levels of hier-
archy pulling towards fragmentation and integration. Uncertainty, ­variable
distribution of interests and sought after linkages with other sectors con-
stitute inherent elements of this complex (Keohane and Victor 2011:
12–13). Zelli et al. (2013: 349) also adopt a similar approach, discerning
institutional interactions and complexes. The fragmented character of the
global climate governance architecture can thus be better understood as
an amalgam of

different institutional approaches to be situated along a continuum ranging

from international and public, to public-private or private interventions.
Some are related to international agreements and norms and thus fall under
a shadow of hierarchy, while others are situated in the realm of non-­
hierarchical steering without any overarching authority. Its potential reaches
up to becoming a global energy governance regime in case organized around
concrete national caps on energy use. (Zelli et al. 2013: 340–2)

Among a number of successes, one can list the institutionalization of

the Green Climate Fund and various financing instruments. Moreover,
subtler effects and results are often unrecognized in assessments of the
climate regime (e.g. the direction and progress of research, development
and deployment (RD&D) and international cooperation on clean energy
technologies) (Zelli et al. 2013: 341, 349). At the same time, global cli-
mate governance is ‘gradually complemented by transnational—border-­
crossing and non-state-based—forms of governance’ (Zelli et al. 2013:
347). As Falkner (2016: 1112) maintains,

bottom-up initiatives have come together in transnational networks that

coordinate their activities and promote diffusion of climate policies through-
out the world. The trend towards transnationalization of climate initiatives,
which gathered pace particularly from the early 2000s, has embedded cli-
mate policy more deeply in the domestic agenda of leading emitters, has
helped spread low-carbon policy approaches and technologies around the
world, and is stimulating a growing interest in innovative global solutions.
 INTRODUCTION 17

Crucially, transnational climate governance prioritizes and utilizes dis-

closure. In particular, transnational networks contribute to climate gover-
nance by providing information; enhancing transparency; creating
benchmarking processes against which corporate practices are assessed
environmentally-wise; institutionalizing novel norms at the transnational
level; stimulating competition among corporate actors; and, fostering
behavior change in the direction of more climate-friendly practices (Zelli
et al. 2013: 349). Before COP21, one could foresee three possible sce-
narios regarding the evolution of the regime:

• A comprehensive agreement structured around national carbon caps.

These would lead to a global emissions cap and be tantamount to a
full-fledged global energy governance regime. The political cleavages
evidently rendered this option highly unlikely.
• A ‘bottom-up’ climate regime, where climate change actions would
lie in the hands of states with very loose scrutiny by formal global
institutions.
• A hybrid model, with bottom-up actions following top-down estab-
lished targets and embedded in a global system of political account-
ability (Dubash and Florini 2011: 14).

The Paris Agreement represented a milestone in international climate

change mitigation by giving birth to the hybrid model and a new logic of
domestically driven climate action. On the one hand, the agreement was
of a traditional, classical internationalist kind where governments negoti-
ated and agreed upon independent nationally determined contributions
that are neither legally binding nor contemplate the creation of a post-­
national institution as the fiduciary-guarantor of the accord. Rather than
satisfying calls for strong top-down governance and mandatory emissions
reductions, the agreement explicitly affirmed the primacy of domestic pol-
itics, as well as states’ strong aversion to get bogged down to legally bind-
ing commitments. This way, the Paris agreement downplays distributional
conflicts and allows states to opt for their level of ambition and means of
climate action (Falkner 2016: 1111–1119).
On the other hand, a number of international, formal and informal,
mechanisms were put into place to monitor, guide and incentivize ambitious
national climate change mitigation policies. Mitigation efforts are not left ‘to
an entirely bottom-up logic’, but—to the contrary—are embedded ‘in an
international system of climate accountability and a “ratchet” mechanism’
18 F. PROEDROU

(Falkner 2016: 1107–8). Negotiators then positioned international policy

deliberation and coordination as a bridge between the climate-mandated
emissions ceiling and the outcome of the sum of national pledges. In addi-
tion, two instruments were designed to scrutinize states’ performance, and
are expected to monitor compliance with submitted national pledges and
push for more ambitious climate targets and agendas. The first is interna-
tional review and peer pressure.The second the ‘naming and shaming’ by the
global civil society of those states failing to reach their national goals. In this
brave new world of climate politics and diplomacy, political leadership,
financial assistance, moral suasion and soft reciprocity are expected to play a
crucial role (Falkner 2016: 1120–4).
COP21 also set the benchmark goal of no more than 2 degrees Celsius
increase of the global temperature. At the same time, it alleged for the first
time that this may not be sufficient, and that a target of 1.5 degrees Celsius
increase may be necessary to avert runaway climate change. The Paris
summit also set forth the proposition for a mitigation strategy focused not
only on minimizing emissions but the parallel need to enhance the absorp-
tion capacity of the Earth’s carbon sinks (Haas 2017).
In many ways, the Paris Accord represents more of an evolutionary,
rather than revolutionary, step approximating a case ‘of global coordina-
tion through disclosure and scrutiny rather than explicit regulation’
(Dubash and Florini 2011: 14). In a sense, it ‘rationalizes an already
emerging system of domestically driven climate policy’, since ‘a gap had
been growing between the inertia and gridlock that characterized the mul-
tilateral negotiations and the increasingly active field of climate policy
experimentation at national level’ (Falkner 2016: 1119). In practice, in
the run-up to COP21 in December 2015, at least 173 countries had
already adopted renewable energy targets, while close to 150 had put in
place renewable energy support policies (European Commission 2016: 5).
The emergence of these policy amid a built up of pressure on the road to
the summit was linked to the growing realization of states—and of an
increasing number of domestic societal actors—of the potential costs of
continued climate inaction.. The independent nationally determined con-
tributions that countries agreed to in Paris reflect a shift in national priori-
ties and raise hopes that the stakeholders will measure up to the task. In
this context, the climate regime evolves into the orchestrator of country-­
level transitions (Goldthau 2013a: 9). The new paradigm is in tune with
Dubash and Florini’s (2011: 16) prediction that ‘as the climate change
regime emerges … global governance around energy will take the form of
 INTRODUCTION 19

common procedures for reporting and dialogue around national policy

actions, rather than around globally agreed substantive commitments.’
The developments in Paris also seem to vindicate prior projections that
‘multilateral negotiations will yield many energy policy prescriptions or
mandate any energy or environmental policy reforms to national practices’
(Ebinger and Avasarala 2013: 190).
This hybrid model means that climate change mitigation can benefit
from both global and local action. In particular, on the one hand, global
action brings uniformity and consistency; creates economies of scale;
ensures equity; prevents spill-overs and a race to the bottom; and mini-
mizes transaction costs associated with coordination and negotiation
(Brown and Sovacool 2011: 224–33). Local action, on the other hand,
facilitates experimentation and innovation; flexibility; accountability and
participation; simplicity; and contagion, positive competition among local
actors and a race to the top (Brown and Sovacool 2011: 233–6).
This path of evolutionary governance bears resemblance to the evolu-
tion of the global trade regime that developed by means of intergovern-
mental agreements and only recently adopted some supranational
characteristics and mechanisms (Falkner et al. 2011: 218). Indeed, the
evolution of the trade and climate regimes seem to conjoin each other in
that a lucrative global carbon market, within which competition will play
out in a carbon-constrained global economy, may soon become a building
block of a more comprehensive global climate architecture (Falkner et al.
2011: 218). For this to materialize, the broadening of participation, the
provision of financial incentives, and the enlightened action of states are
essential prerequisites (Held et al. 2011: 5).

The Bold New Trilemma: Climate Change

Mitigation, Energy Security and Growth
For the time being, a governance void lies at the roots of the haphazard tran-
sition that is currently under way, particularly manifest at the interface
between energy security, climate change, globalization and trade (Bradshaw
2014: 191). Global governance, as a result, remains deeply fragmented, since

• The global climate change governance structure has been exhausted in

a monolithic top-down approach to emissions reductions, which
encounters severe distributional and free-rider problems, and epitomizes
the Global North-Global South controversy. The developments in Paris
have opened up a window of opportunity, which has yet to prove itself.
20 F. PROEDROU

• The global energy governance structure remains both essentially

divided in dichotomous blocks of exporters and importers, and
absorbed with traditional energy security problems.
• The global trade structure remains trapped in the Global North-­
Global South divide and hence delivers neither on the economic and
social, nor on the global sustainability front.
• The globalization governance structure remains committed to the
goal of delivering further growth of international trade and eco-
nomic activity, which lie at the heart of both ongoing climate change
and energy insecurity (Bradshaw 2014: 191).

Since ‘a global framework is missing to prevent carbon leakage, address

equity issues, and ensure economic scales’ (Brown and Sovacool 2011:
323), climate change efforts and the current scope and scale of the transi-
tion remain out of tune with the urgency of required climate action. The
initial governance efforts aimed at setting benchmarks for climate change
mitigation (the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol)

erred in addressing the issue of emissions in the margin, focusing on modest

reductions from current levels on the part of major emitters rather than set-
ting overall emissions levels and confronting the question of how to allocate
emissions permits on a global scale (Young 2011: 628).

Carbon reduction percentages and degrees though are only arbitrary

formulas that remain far off from target. There is now general acknowl-
edgement that the carbon intensity of global energy use must decrease by a
factor of 21 by 2050 (Goldthau 2013a: 4), and that no more than one third
of the proven fossil reserves can be consumed if the 2 degrees Celsius tem-
perature increase threshold is not to be surpassed prior to 2050. Business as
usual scenarios, however, only perpetuate the crisis given projections for a
further rise of emissions that will increase global temperature by more than
3 degrees Celsius (Bradshaw 2014: 192). While a 30–40 percent emissions
decrease will be manageable with current efficiency, renewables and conser-
vation schemes along with efficient forest sinks, we remain way far from
approaching the 80 percent (and higher) drop in global emissions that is
needed to stabilize the global temperature (Young 2011: 634). The national
pledges submitted in the Paris Climate Summit are projected, if fully imple-
mented, to result in global warming of 2.7 Celsius degrees above pre-
industrial levels,4 much higher than the benchmark goal of maximum
 INTRODUCTION 21

2 degrees—let alone the more ambitious 1.5 Celsius degree target (Falkner
2016: 1108, 1115). In fact, this more ambitious goal may be a more appro-
priate benchmark if one accounts for the much larger than initially esti-
mated heat absorption by the oceans and the very slow pace of evaporation
of trapped emissions (Falkner 2016: 1108).
Hence emerges the need to move to the idea of a strict, ecologically
driven, carbon budget (Young 2011: 627). This entails setting a globally
acceptable level of carbon equivalent greenhouse gases emissions annually
(which lies at a total of 750 gigatones by 2050) (Zelli et al. 2013: 340–1),
together with mechanisms to monitor progress (Young 2011: 629). For
now, however, this idea remains elusive, rightly seen as too hazardous for
the perpetuation of growth strategies. Ironically, the idea of a carbon bud-
get has been contemplated by natural gas proponents, who argue that the
energy needs of the world can be covered by existent natural gas reserves
that will broadly substitute for coal and oil use.5 The International Energy
Agency’s (IEA) golden age of gas scenario, however, estimates a cata-
strophic global temperature increase of 3.5 by 2035 (cited in Bradshaw
2014: 66–7). As a result, as long as firm caps on carbon emissions are not
institutionalized and regulated, the speed, scope and scale of the transition
to clean energy systems is bound to remain limited (Brown and Sovacool
2011: 179–80).
Reversing climate change in practice comes down to drastically fewer
carbon equivalent emissions, lower fossil energy production and consump-
tion and, effectively, a smaller ecological and carbon footprint. The global
energy system, though, remains emphatically locked-in the proliferation of
fossil energy production and consumption. Fossil energy fuels all eco-
nomic sectors (e.g. industry, services, trade, etc.) in service of a premise
upon the propensity of national economic systems and the global econ-
omy to grow (Mulligan 2010: 87). This growth imperative dominates
economic thinking and results in exponential growth beyond biophysical
limits in all sectors—most significantly for the purposes of this book in
exponential growth in energy use and emissions. This is hardly what one
would call prudent and sustainable housekeeping.
In this growth-dominated policy context, energy policy and security
focus on security of energy supply, rather than on the reversal of climate
change and sustainability. As a result, anti-climate policies, such as a return
to coal, are consistently pursued despite the advent of climate change,
while energy sector reforms reflect more of a motivation to increase energy
efficiency for a mix of economic, geopolitical and security reasons, rather
Another random document with
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 Chapter 11
THE TAMAHNOWIS ROCKS
It was very early—in fact, the first rays of the sun, not yet risen, had
just touched the lofty heights of Rainier—when Rhodes and I left the
Inn.
Besides our revolvers and a goodly supply of ammunition, there
were the lights, an aneroid, a thermometer, our canteens, ice-picks;
two pieces of light but very strong rope, each seventy-five feet in
length; our knives, like those which hunters carry; and food sufficient
to last us a week.
Yes, and there were the ice-creepers, which we should need in
making our way over the glaciers, the Paradise and the Cowlitz, to
that mass of rock, the scene of those mysterious tragedies.
We did not take the direct trail up but went over to the edge of the
cañon that I—for this was my first visit to Mount Rainier—might see
the Nisqually Glacier.
And, as we made our way upward through the brightening scene, as
I gazed upon the grim cosmic beauty all about me, up into the great
cirque of the Nisqually, up to the broad summit of the mountain and
(in the opposite direction) out over the Tatoosh Range to distant
Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens all violet and gold in the
morning sun—well, that strange story which had brought us here
then took on the seeming of a mirage or a dream.
"The mountain," said Milton Rhodes, as we stood leaning on our
alpenstocks during one of our halts, "once rose to a height of sixteen
thousand feet or more. The dip of the lava layers shows that. The
whole top was blown clean off."
"Must have been some real fireworks," was my comment, "when that
happened."
"See that line of bare rock there on the very summit, Bill, midway
between Point Success up here on the left and Gibraltar here on the
right?"
"I noticed that," I told him, "and was wondering about it. Why isn't
there any snow there?"
"Heat, Bill," said Rhodes. "Heat."
"Heat! Great Vesuvius, I thought that Mount Rainier was a dead
volcano."
"Not dead, Bill. Only slumbering. Four eruptions are on record.[4]
Whether Old He is to die in his slumber, or whether he is one day to
awake in mad fury—that, of course, no man can tell us."
"To see it belching forth smoke and sending down streams of lava
would be an interesting sight certainly," said I. "And I wonder what
effect that would have on this Drome business—that is, if there is
any such thing as Drome at all."
"Drome!" Milton echoed.
For some moments he stood there with a strange look of abstraction
upon his face.
"Drome! Ah, Bill," said he, "I wish that I knew what it means. But
come, we'll never reach the Tamahnowis Rocks if we stand here
wondering."
And so we resumed our climb. We were the early birds this morning;
not a living soul was to be seen anywhere on the mountain. But hark!
What was that? Somebody whistling somewhere up there and off to
the right. The whistles came in rapid succession, and they were loud
and clear and ringing. I stopped and looked but could see nothing.
I should have explained that we had turned aside from the edge of
the cañon, had crossed that little stream mentioned by grandfather
Scranton and had begun to climb that steep rocky mass that he
spoke of.
"What the deuce," said I, "is that fellow whistling like that for? It can't
be to us."
"That," Milton Rhodes smiled, "isn't a man, Bill."
"Not a man?"
"It's a marmot," Milton told me.
"A marmot? Well," said I, "we live and we learn. I could have sworn,
Milton, that it was a human being."
The ascent was a steep one, and we climbed in silence. The horse-
trail, coming from the left, goes slanting and then twisting its way up
this rocky rampart. On reaching the path, we paused for some
moments to get our breath, then plodded on.
"I was thinking," said Milton Rhodes at last, "of what Francis
Parkman said."
"What did he say?"
"'I would go farther for one look into the crater of Vesuvius than to
see all the ruined temples in Italy.'"
"I wonder," I returned, "how far we shall have to go to see that angel
that says Drome, not to mention her pretty demon."
Rhodes laughed.
"We are getting there, Bill; we're getting there—near the scene of the
tragedies at any rate."
Ere long we reached the top. Here we passed the last shrub and in a
little space came to a small glacier. The tracks of the horses led
straight across it. But our route did not go thither; it led up over the
rocks.
Suddenly, as we toiled our way upward, Rhodes, with the remark
that Science had some strange stories to tell, asked me if I had ever
heard of Tartaglia's slates. I never had, though I had heard of
Tartaglia, and I wanted to know about those slates.
"Tombstones," said Milton.
"Tombstones?"
"Tombstones, Bill. What with the terrible poverty, Tartaglia, when
educating himself, could not get even a slate, and so he went out
and wrote his exercises on tombstones."
"Gosh!"
"And did you ever hear of Demoivre's death? There is a problem for
your psychological sharks."
"I never heard of him. And how did the gentleman die?"
"He told them that he had to sleep so many minutes longer each
day."
"And did he do it?"
"That's what he did, Bill."
"And," I asked with growing curiosity, "when he had slept through the
twenty-four hours? Then what?"
"He never woke up," said Milton Rhodes.
Then he told me that queer story about Isaac Barrow, or, rather,
about his father. When sent to school, at Charter-house, young
Barrow raised the very deuce and raised it high; so much deuce, in
fact, that dad Barrow, whilst praying, said that, if it should be the
Divine pleasure to take from him any of his children, he could best
stand the loss of Isaac.
And did I know what the heart of a man does when his head is cut
off? I (who was wondering at his sudden turn to these queer
scientific matters) said I supposed that the heart stops beating. But
Milton Rhodes said no; the organ continues its pulsations for an hour
or longer.
And had I heard of Spallanzani's very curious experiment with the
crow? I never had, but I wanted to. Spallanzani, Milton told me, gave
a crow a good feed and then chopped its head off. (That decapitation
didn't surprise me any, for I knew that Spallanzani was a real
scientist.) The body was placed in a temperature the same as that of
the living bird and kept there for six hours. Spallanzani then took the
body out, opened it and found that the food which he had given the
bird was thoroughly digested.
"These scientists," was my comment, "are queer birds themselves."
Then he told me some strange things about sympathetic vibrations—
that a drinking-glass can be smashed by the human voice (I knew
that) that an alpine avalanche can be started thundering down by the
tinkle of a bell; and so, as Tyndall tells us, the muleteers in the Swiss
mountains silence the bells of their animals when in proximity to
such danger. And he told me of that musician who came near
destroying the Colebrook Dale suspension bridge with his fiddle.[5]
Then came the strangest thing of all—the story of Vogt's cricket. The
professor severed the body of a cricket (a living cricket, of course)
into two pieces, and the fore part then turned round and ate up the
hinder!
"Yes," Milton Rhodes said, "Science has some queer stories to tell."
"I should say that she has!"
"And maybe," he added, "she'll have a stranger one than ever to tell
when we get back—that is, if we ever do."
We passed McClure's Rock, height about seven thousand four
hundred feet; made our way along the head of a small glacier, which
fell away towards the Nisqually; ascended the cleaver, at this point
very low and along the base of which we had been moving; and
there, on the other side and coming up within a few yards of the spot
where we stood, was the Paradise Glacier, white and beautiful in the
sunlight.
Milton Rhodes gave me an inquiring look.
"Recognize this spot?" he queried.
"I never saw it before, of course; but, yes, I believe that I do: this is
the place where the angel and the demon crossed over, the spot
where Scranton, White and Long found the tracks again."
"This is the place."
"And where," I asked, "are the Tamahnowis Rocks?"
"Can't see them from here, Bill. They're right over there, half a mile
distant or so, probably three-quarters."
He moved down to the edge of the snow and ice; I followed.
"Now for the creepers," said Milton, seating himself on a rock-
fragment. "Then we are off."
A few moments, and we had fastened on the toothed soles of steel
and were under way again.
Suddenly Rhodes, who was leading, stopped, raised his alpenstock
and pointed with it.
"There they are, Bill!"
And there they were. The Rocks of Tamahnowis—the Spirit, the
Demon Rocks—in sight at last.
 Chapter 12
WE ENTER THEIR SHADOW
For a space we stood there in silence looking at that dark mass
which reared itself up, like a temple in ruins I thought, in the midst of
the crevassed ice.
Then I said:
"Who, looking at that pile, would ever dream that there was anything
mysterious and terrible about it, anything scientific?"
"The place," Milton Rhodes returned, "certainly has an innocent look;
but looks, you know, are often deceiving. And how deceiving in this
particular instance, that we know full well indeed. Besides Scranton,
yourself and me, not a living soul knows how horrible was the death
of that poor girl."
I made no response. Many were the thoughts that came and went as
I stood there and looked at those Tamahnowis Rocks.
Of a sudden I noticed a slight smile in the eyes of my companion.
"Why the grin?" I queried. "This, I must say, is a sweet time for grins.
I would suggest that, instead, you say your prayers."
Rhodes laughed. Then he pointed to my right hand. This, I now
discovered, was resting on that pocket which held my revolver.
"I see," he said, "that you have your artillery very handy."
"Yes; and I notice that you have, too."
"I wish that I could have it even more so, Bill.
"You know, old tillicum," he added, his brows contracting and a
shadow seeming to pass athwart his face and then to return and
linger there, "maybe I'll wish that I hadn't dragged you into this wild,
unearthly business. And yet I wouldn't care to face it without you
beside me."
"Dragged me into it?" I exclaimed. "Now, look here: please, Milton,
don't say that again."
"I hope, Bill, that I haven't—"
"Not a bit, not a bit. But I hope you will never talk like that any more."
He raised a hand and placed it on my shoulder.
"Pardon me, old tillicum," he said. "And yet, after all, I may regret it,
for this business before us may prove a most terrible one—
something even worse than that."
For a few moments there was silence, and then I said:
"Well, let's klatawah."
"Yes," said he, turning and starting; "let's klatawah.
"And," he added, "do you know what that reminds me of?"
"I wonder."
"Of Sluiskin's appeal to Stevens and Van Trump, down there at the
falls that now bear his name:
"'Wake klatawah! Wake klatawah!'"
"But," said I, "they went, and they came back. That's an augury."
"But," he answered, "if it hadn't been for those steam-caves up there
in the crater, they might not have come back, might have perished
on the summit that night in the bitter cold. And then the Siwash
would have been a true prophet."
"Well, there may be something equivalent to those steam-caves
somewhere in the place that we are going to. I don't mean, of
course, in that pile of rock over there."
"Of course not. But that isn't what's troubling me; it's the possibility
that we may be too late."
"Too late?" I exclaimed.
"Just so. It is only at long intervals—so far as we know, that is—that
these strange beings appear on the mountain."
"Well?" I queried.
"Well, Bill, glaciers, you know, move."
"I know that. But what on earth has the movement of the ice to do
with the appearance of this angel on Mount Rainier?"
But Milton wouldn't tell me that. Instead, he told me to think. Think? I
did. I thought hard; but I couldn't see it. However, we were drawing
close to the rocks now, and soon I would have the answer. I felt that
pocket again. Yes, the revolver was still there!
"Look here!" said I suddenly.
Milton Rhodes, who was on the point of springing across a fissure,
turned and looked.
"How does this come?" I wanted to know. "I thought that the
Tamahnowis Rocks were on the Cowlitz Glacier?"
"This is the Cowlitz, Bill."
"But we haven't left the Paradise yet."
"Oh, yes, we have. There is no cleaver between them, no anything;
at this place it is all one continuous sheet of ice."
"Oh, that's it. Well, the ice is pretty badly crevassed before us. Glad
it isn't all like this."
We worked our way forward, twisting and turning. Slowly but steadily
we advanced, drawing near and nearer to that dark, frowning,
broken mass, wondering (at any rate, I was) about the secrets that
we should find there—unless, indeed, we were too late. What had
Milton meant by that? How on earth could the apparition of the angel
and the demon be in any manner contingent upon the movement of
the ice?
Well, we were very near now; we were so near, in fact, that, if there
was any one, any thing lurking there in the rocks, human or monster
(or both) he or it could hear us.
We would soon know whether we had come too late.
Ere long we had got over the fissures and were moving over ice
unbroken and smooth. I wondered if this was the spot where, so
many years ago, White and Long had been killed. But I did not voice
that thought. The truth is that this terrible place held me silent. And,
when we moved into the shadow cast by the broken, towering pile,
the scene became more weird and terrible than ever.
A few moments, and we halted, so close to the rocky wall,
precipitous and broken, that I could have touched it with outstretched
hand.
How cold it seemed here, how strange that sinister quality (or was it
only my imagination?) of the enveloping shadows!
"Well," said Milton Rhodes, and I noticed that his voice was low and
guarded, "here we are."
I made no response.
The silence there was as the silence of a tomb.
 Chapter 13
"I THOUGHT I HEARD SOMETHING"
"What," I asked, "is the first thing to do now?"
"Find the spot where Rhoda Dillingham was killed. The snowfall of
the day before yesterday covered the stains, of course. I feel
confident, however, what with the description that Victor Boileau
gave me, that I shall recognize the spot the moment I see it. It's over
there on the other side, Bill, in the sunlight."
"Why that precise spot?"
"Because I hope to find something there—something that Victor
Boileau himself didn't see."
A cold shiver went through my heart. We were so near now. Yes, so
near; but near to what? Or had we come too late?
"Now for it, Bill!" said Milton Rhodes.
He turned and began to work his way down along the base of the
rock-wall. The ice now sloped steeply, and, from there to the end of
the frowning mass of rocks, and for some distance beyond it, the
glacier was fissured and split in all directions. The going was really
difficult. Had we tried it without the creepers, we should have broken
our necks. One consolation was that the distance was a short one.
Why on earth had the artist brought his daughter to this awful place?
But, then, there had been nothing terrible about the scene to
Dillingham, until the tragedy. As for the appearance of the rocks—
yes, I had to acknowledge that—there was nothing intrinsically
terrible about it: it was what one knew that made it so. Its sinister, its
awful seeming would not have been there had I not known what had
happened.
We made our way around the end of the rocky pile into the glare of
the sunlight and started up the crevassed and split surface there.
The slope, however, was not near so steep as the one we had
descended on the other side. Sixty feet, and Rhodes stopped and
said, looking eagerly, keenly this way and that:
"This is the place, Bill. There can be no mistake. Here are the two
big crevasses that Boileau described. Yes, it was in this very spot,
ten or twelve feet from the base of the wall, that the girl lay when her
father came—lay dying, that terrible wound in her throat."
He began to scrape the snow away with his steel-soled shoes. A few
moments, and he paused and pointed. I shuddered as I saw that
stain he had uncovered.
"There. You see, Bill?"
"I see. Cover it up."
I ran my eyes along the base of the rocks; I searched every spot that
the eye could reach on the face or in the shadowy recesses of the
dark, broken mass, towering there high above us; I looked all around
at the fissured ice: but there was nothing unusual to be seen
anywhere.
"Where," I asked, and my tones were low and guarded, "did the
angel, if the angel was here—where, Milton, could the angel and the
demon have vanished so suddenly and without leaving a single
trace?"
"There lies our problem, Bill. A very few minutes should find us in
possession of the answer—if, that is, we have not come too late. As
to the vanishing without leaving a single trace behind them, that no
trace was found is by no means tantamount to saying that they left
none."
"I know that. But where did they go?"
"Let us," said Rhodes, "see if we can discover the answer."
"I don't think," I observed, "that they could have gone right into the
rocks: either Dillingham, as he made his way here to the girl, would
have seen them, or Boileau would have found the entrance to the
way that they took."
"At any rate," Rhodes answered, "we may take that, for the moment,
as a working hypothesis, and so we will turn our attention now to
another quarter. If we fail there—though, remember, ice moves, Bill
—we will then give these rocks a complete and careful examination
with the object of settling the question whether the great Boileau
really did see everything that is to be found here."
"And so—" I began.
"And so?" he queried.
"Then they—or it—disappeared by way of the ice."
"Precisely," Rhodes nodded: "by way of the ice. And now you see
what I meant when I reminded you that the ice here moves."
"Yes; I believe that I do, at last. Great Heaven, Milton, what can this
thing mean?"
"That is for us to seek to discover. And so we will give our attention
to these crevasses."
He moved to the edge of one of those big fissures that I have
mentioned, the upper one, and peered down into the bluish depths of
it. I followed and stood beside him.
"It couldn't have been into this one," he said.
"Impossible," I told him.
He moved along the edge of the crevasse, in the direction of the
rocks. I went along after him, my right hand near that pocket which
held my revolver.
"And," thought I bitterly to myself, "this is the Twentieth Century!"
"They could," said Rhodes at length, stopping within a few yards of
the wall of rock, "have gone into the crevasse at this point. Yes, most
certainly they could have done so."
"But where could they have gone to? There is no break in the wall
here, not even a crack."
"Don't forget, Bill, that ice moves."
"If that is the explanation, we shall go back no wiser than when we
came."
"Let us hope," he returned, "that it doesn't prove the explanation. I
have no knowledge as to the rate of the ice-movement here. The
Nisqually moves a foot or more a day in summer. The movement
here may be very similar, though, on the other hand, there are
certain considerations which suggest the possibility that it may be
only a few inches per diem."
"It may be so."
"However, Bill, this speculation or surmise will avail us nothing now.
So let's give our attention to this other crevasse. And, if it too should
reveal nothing—well, there are plenty of others."
"Yes," said I rather dubiously; "there are plenty of others."
"The unusual size of these two," he went on, "and this being the
scene of the tragedy led me to think that it would not be a bad idea
to start the examination at this point. The great Boileau—and I
learned this with not a little satisfaction, Bill, though I may say 'twas
with no colossal surprise—the great Boileau did not give even the
slightest attention to any crevasse. He knew before ever he came up
here, of course, that the girl's death had been a purely accidental
one.
"However, let us see what we are to find in this other fissure."
We found it even wider than the one which we had just quitted. And
scarcely had we come to a pause there on the edge of it, and within
a few yards of the rock, when I started and gave a low exclamation
for silence.
For some moments we stood listening intently, but all was silent,
save for the low, ghostly whisper of the mountain wind.
"What was it?" Rhodes asked in a low voice.
"I don't know. It may have been nothing, of course. But I certainly
thought I heard something."
"Where?"
"I can't say. It seemed to come from out of the rock itself or—from
this."
And I indicated the crevasse at our feet.
 Chapter 14
THE WAY TO DROME
The depth of the fissure was here twelve or fifteen feet. A short
distance out, however, it narrowed, and at that point it was almost
completely filled with snow. I noticed even then, in that moment of
tense uncertainty, that it would be very easy for a person to make his
way down that snow to the bottom. A few steps then, and he would
be at the real base of that wall of rock. Yes, that would explain it!
A strange excitement possessed me, though I endeavored to
suppress every sign of it. Yes, the angel and the demon—if the angel
had been out upon the ice at the moment of the tragedy—could have
disappeared easily enough. 'Tis true, no tracks had been noticed
there. That, however, was no proof positive that there had been
none. And perhaps, forsooth, there had been no tracks there to
discover. The angel might not have been out upon the glacier at all,
and the thing might not have left a single mark in the snow. It could
have disappeared without doing that. For I knew what had killed poor
Rhoda Dillingham.
Supposing, however, that this was indeed the secret, what then? A
great deal was explained, but as much remained inexplicable. For
where on earth, after reaching the bottom of the crevasse, could the
angel and the demon have gone? There was, so far as I could see,
no possible way of escape. There was a remarkable overhang of
rock there at the end, coming down within a yard or so of the floor.
But that was all it was, an overhang. It was not the entrance to any
subterranean passage.
Perhaps, if this was indeed the way, we had come too late; perhaps
there had been an opening there, an opening that, what with the
movement of the ice, was now wholly concealed.
I looked at Milton Rhodes, and on the instant I knew that he too had
been noticing all these things. Had the same thoughts come to him
also?
"Everything is still now," I observed. "That sound might have been
only a fancy."
He nodded slowly.
"Or it might have been made by the glacier. No telling, though, Bill. It
might have been real enough and something else. We mustn't forget
that for one moment."
"I am not likely to do so. However, what do you make of this?"
"It may be the way to—the way to Drome. And it may, of course, be
nothing of the kind. They easily could have vanished into this
crevasse."
"And then where could they have gone?"
"Probably the way is blocked by the ice now. Who can say? That
overhang down there—"
"Is not an entrance," I told him.
"There may, however, Bill, be something there. It will take us only a
moment to find that out."
He turned forthwith and moved along the edge to that spot where the
fissure narrowed and it was filled with snow. I followed. A few
moments, and we stood at the bottom.
"Great Heaven!" said I as we moved along between those walls of
ice.
"What is it, Bill?" queried Milton, pausing and looking back at me.
"Suppose this ice-mass here above were to slip! We'd be flattened
between these walls like pancakes!"
Rhodes smiled a little and said he guessed we'd be like pancakes all
right if that happened. The next moment we were moving forward
again, our steel soles grating harshly, though not loudly, upon the
glacier-polished bottom.
"You see," said I as we drew near to the end, "the way to Drome
does not lie here. Under that overhang there is nothing but rock.
There is not even a crack, to say nothing of an entrance."
"It certainly looks like it, Bill. However, it will do no harm to make an
examination. That there is an entrance we know. And, if it isn't here
—well, then it must be some place else. And, unless we are too late,
we'll search these Rocks of Tamahnowis until we find it."
A few steps, and Rhodes halted, his left hand resting against the
rock. He stooped to peer under. I exclaimed and involuntarily seized
him by the sleeve.
"There it is again!"
He straightened up, and we stood in an attitude of riveted attention.
The place, however, was as silent as the grave.
"I know that I heard something," I told him.
"Yes; I heard it that time, too," said Milton Rhodes. "Where did it
come from?"
I shook my head.
"Maybe one of the sounds that the glacier makes," he proffered.
"It is possible. But—"
"Well?"
"It seemed to come right out of the rocks; but that isn't possible."
"We'll see about that, Bill."
He pressed a button, and the strong rays of his electric light played
upon the dark rock and the blue ice. The light in his left hand, he
dropped to his knees and looked under. I heard an exclamation and
saw him move forward. At that instant a sound brought me up and
whirled me around.
My heart was in my throat. I could have sworn that the sound had
issued from some point just behind me. But there was nothing to be
seen there—only the walls of blue ice and the blue sky above.
"Must have been some sound made by the glacier slipping or
something," I told myself.
I turned—to find that Milton Rhodes had vanished!
For a little space I stood staring and wondering, then called in a low
voice:
"Milton. Oh, Milton."
No answer.
"Milton."
Silence still.
"Milton," I called once more. "Where are you?"
The answer was a scream, a scream that threatened to arrest the
coursing blood in my veins—the sound seeming to issue from the
very heart of the rock-mass there before me.
 Chapter 15
THE ANGEL
The scream ceased as suddenly as it had come. I drew my revolver,
snapped on the electric light, and, stooping low, looked into that spot
where, a few moments before, Milton Rhodes had so suddenly and
mysteriously disappeared.
Nothing but the unbroken rock before me. And yet Rhodes had
vanished. I turned the light full upon the low roof, and then I
exclaimed aloud: the entrance was there!
I dropped to my hands and knees and moved under, the pack not a
little impeding my movements. An instant, and I was standing upright
peering into a high, narrow tunnel, which some convulsion of nature,
in some lost age of the earth, had rent right through the living rock.
Nothing was to be seen, save the broken walls, floor and roof, deep,
eerie shadows crawling and gliding as the light moved. The view,
however, was a very restricted one, for the gallery, which sloped
gently upward, gave a sudden turn at a distance of only thirty feet or
so. What awaited me somewhere beyond that turn?
For a few moments I listened intently. Not the faintest sound—
nothing but the loud beating of my heart. What had happened to
Rhodes?
"Milton!" I called softly. "Oh, Milton!"
No answer came.
I grasped a projection of rock, drew myself up into the tunnel and
advanced as rapidly and silently as possible, the light and the
alpenstock in my left hand, the revolver in the right. But it was not
very silently, what with the creepers. At times they grated harshly; it
was as if spirit-things were mocking me with suppressed,